Have you participated yet in our quick online poll on the relationship
between MPAs and ecosystem-based management, announced in last month's
issue? One respondent will be picked at random to win an official
MPA News canvas tote bag. To participate, please visit www.mpanews.org.
Poll results will be reported in next month's MPA News. Thank
you to all who have responded so far.

BRINGING MPAs ONLINE: THE USE OF WEBCAMS FOR EDUCATION,
MONITORING, AND OTHER PURPOSES

A fundamental challenge in MPA management is that the resources being
protected are often remote - located underwater, out of human eyesight,
sometimes kilometers from shore. This can make monitoring, education,
and other management activities relatively difficult, compared to parks
on land. To address this challenge, some practitioners are using
webcam technology: unmanned cameras that transmit live video or still imagery
from MPAs to the World Wide Web. On the Web, people can access this
footage - resource managers, educators, scientists, enforcement personnel,
and the general public. In some cases, individuals at their computers
can even operate the cameras from where they sit, moving the webcams up
and down an anchor line, or rotating them for a 360-degree view.

The technology offers substantial opportunities for MPA management.
As you might expect, it can also involve significant financial investment
and maintenance requirements, as well as various logistical limitations.
This month, MPA News explores how some managers have implemented
this technology, what their experiences have been, and under what conditions
webcams may be most appropriate to use.

Race Rocks: Tidal-powered webcams

MPA News first reported in November 2000 on webcams in the Race
Rocks Ecological Reserve, a small nine-island archipelago 17 km from the
city of Victoria on Canada's Pacific coast (MPA
News 2:5). The context was MPA enforcement. Although
a series of webcams in the reserve was intended primarily to monitor wildlife
and educate visitors about Race Rocks, the webcams had also proven to be
handy as a surveillance tool. Management agencies had received e-mail
messages from visitors to the Race Rocks website, http://www.racerocks.com
(where webcam videos can be viewed), notifying officials about illegal
activity observed around the islands. Fishing in the reserve, or
entering it when whales are present, are both off-limits.

The site's four webcams are each above water, stationed on the main
island of the archipelago. Because visibility is better in air than
water, and because the reserve is so small, the array of cameras provide
excellent views of the surface of the entire reserve. The webcams
have been used to report tagged sea lions and monitor other wildlife, record
work being done on the reserve's technical infrastructure, and check if
sea conditions onsite are adequate for practitioners to access the reserve
by boat. They have also been used to instruct school groups on ecology:
a new program co-developed by the Race Rocks website team provides interactive
exercises on wildlife tracking using the cameras.

The website and webcams are operated by nearby Lester B. Pearson College,
which has made Race Rocks an integral part of its programs. (The
reserve as a whole is overseen by the Ministry of Parks of the province
of British Columbia.) Pearson College employs a full-time staff member
to live on the main island, responsible for maintaining and securing the
equipment involved in 24-hour webcasting, including regular cleaning of
the cameras (fouled by sea spray and guano). A retired faculty member
of the college, Garry Fletcher, manages the Race Rocks website and works
with students to produce images and educational information for it.
Fletcher considers the cameras to be just one component in allowing people
to "adopt" the sensitive Race Rocks ecosystem from afar - enabling them
to use it for education and research with minimal environmental impact
on the actual site. He is working to present all aspects of the ecosystem,
with weather data displayed in real time on the Race Rocks website and
an underwater array of sensors scheduled for deployment in the coming months.

One of the main considerations in installing webcams in MPAs is what
their source of energy will be. Although cameras close to shore can
be wired to the mainland power grid, ones further from shore often require
their own energy sources. At Race Rocks, since 2000, a diesel-powered
generator on the main island has provided power for the cameras as well
as for staff lodging and a marine science facility onsite.

As of November 2006, however, the webcams are now running on energy
from tidal currents and an auxiliary solar panel array. Installation
of the new integrated power system, including a tidal energy generator,
was funded by two private companies and a federal grant, and is part of
a long-term effort by Pearson College to make its Race Rocks operation
financially sustainable. "To continue our work on helping to protect
this ecosystem while making it accessible for education and research, we
needed to ensure our continued presence there," says Fletcher. "To
make that financially sustainable, it was necessary to achieve energy self-sufficiency."

More changes are occurring. Pearson College has upgraded its onsite
telecommunications network to address a problem of inadequate bandwith,
which had sometimes resulted in choppy footage onscreen for the growing
number of web visitors. In addition, new remote-control cameras are
planned for an underwater installation and for the side of the island where
harbor seals give birth, an area not thoroughly covered by the present
cameras.

Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents: Monitoring the deep sea

Whereas the Race Rocks webcams monitor that protected area's surface,
a system of webcams planned for installation in the Endeavour Hydrothermal
Vents Marine Protected Area will be on the ocean bottom - more than 2 km
under the sea. This MPA, designated by Canada in 2003, protects a
highly biodiverse ecosystem associated with "vent fields" in the Endeavour
area. In these vent fields, superheated plumes of water and particulates
jet up through the seafloor. Distinctive for their large chimney-like
structures of accreted minerals and metals, the vents provide the basis
for abundant communities of chemosynthetic microbes, giant tube worms,
crabs, and spiders in an otherwise light-free environment. The 93-km2
MPA is located 250 km southwest of Vancouver Island on Canada's Pacific
coast.

The webcams will be part of the NEPTUNE program, a joint Canada-US initiative
to deploy a cable-linked monitoring network in an active seafloor-spreading
zone, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. (The Endeavour Hydrothermal
Vents are just one small part of the plate, which otherwise extends from
Canada down the coast of the US states of Washington and Oregon.)
NEPTUNE will consist of a massive series of miniature observatories, each
equipped with multiple sensors, instruments, and robots. In real
time, the observatories will transmit their data back to land to enable
studies of a wide range of oceanographic, geological, and ecological processes.
(The cables by which the data are transferred will supply the observatories
with energy.)

Kim Juniper is co-chair of science for NEPTUNE Canada, the Canadian
portion of the project (http://www.neptunecanada.ca),
and also serves on the management committee for the Endeavour Hydrothermal
Vents MPA. Although the MPA must still formally approve the deployment
of cameras and other instruments inside its boundaries, Juniper anticipates
Endeavour will be among the first sites linked to the NEPTUNE network.
The main purpose of the cameras will be to monitor ecosystem changes.

"We know from experience with Endeavour and elsewhere that the physical
environment can change substantially over weeks or months," says Juniper.
"Habitat changes provoke major shifts in the composition of the vent fauna.
Within the field of view of the camera, we expect to observe growth of
chimneys and the colonization of new chimney surfaces by the vent fauna.
We will see individual vents increase or decrease their visible discharge,
new vents appear, and other vents shut down completely. The habitat
is also prone to more rapid, sometimes catastrophic changes. This
ecosystem is, after all, sitting in a major earthquake zone. There
are hundreds of minor earthquakes per month in this area."

Kevin Conley, who oversees the MPA for Canada's Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, says the webcams could be an invaluable aid in outreach.
"It would be hard to overstate the outreach potential for a web camera
in a place like Endeavour, given the remote location," he says. "Imagine
having a window to such a novel, dynamic ecosystem right in your classroom,
office, or home."

Conley also notes the cameras may help monitor anthropogenic effects
on the MPA, including impacts from research activities. Because no
sunlight normally reaches the vent ecosystem, the introduction of sustained
artificial light for video could cause algal growth where there is normally
no plant life at all. The appearance of algae could change natural
ecological interactions and also biofoul instruments, including cameras.
To minimize this impact, NEPTUNE will rely on still cameras, taking flash
photos at intervals, rather than video cameras that would require constant
lighting. Juniper says, "Occasional flashes from a digital still
camera are unlikely to cause such problems. Our rule of thumb is
to avoid more than 30 minutes per day, total, of artificial lighting."
NEPTUNE researchers are planning future experiments to quantify the impact
of different sustained lighting regimes on algal growth in the deep sea.
The results will be used to evaluate future proposals for the deployment
of video cameras at Endeavour.

Monterey Bay: Developing "telepresence"

The US National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP) holds a long-term goal
of providing live underwater video streams from its MPAs nationwide.
(The program manages 13 national marine sanctuaries and the recently designated
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.) The idea
is to connect the American public with these MPAs through what the NMSP
calls "telepresence", giving individuals the opportunity to visit these
ocean places virtually.

The pilot site for this telepresence program is the Monterey Bay National
Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS), where three webcams have been in operation since
2002. One is stationed above the surface, while a second is tethered
to a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) that transits up and down a buoy line
underwater. The third camera sits on a stand underwater and is trained
on the ROV. Video feeds are transmitted via Internet2, an advanced
networking consortium of 200 universities, corporations, and other institutions
operating a high-performance version of the standard Internet (http://www.internet2.edu).
Internet2 allows for transmission of high-definition content in real time,
in contrast to the somewhat-fuzzy, low-definition content generated by
most webcams. The underwater webcam in MBNMS, for example, has allowed
aquarium visitors on the East coast of the US to interview divers at work
in MBNMS, located thousands of kilometers across the country. Viewers
can also move the underwater camera up and down its tether line.

To broaden availability of this content, the NMSP is developing a standard
Internet-based, lower-definition portal as well, at http://www.oceanslive.org.
Dan Basta, NMSP director, says, "Soon, anyone with access to a computer
will be able to take a virtual dive in a national marine sanctuary."

The framework for this telepresence was developed in conjunction with
the Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration, the JASON Foundation
for Education, and Mote Marine Laboratory. It is based on technology
pioneered in the 1980s for exploration of the Titanic shipwreck.
Dawn Hayes, education and outreach coordinator for MBNMS, says telepresence
will make the sanctuaries vastly more accessible to the public at large,
without the potential side effects of increasing real visitation rates.
"The public can learn about and hopefully come to appreciate the sanctuaries
without the added [physical] impact of a million more users," she says.

Although MBNMS has no direct authority over the webcams on-site (installation
and maintenance is carried out by the national program office and the Institute
for Exploration), the sanctuary has been able to access video feeds for
public presentations. It is also exploring use of the video in classrooms
in the region and in the sanctuary's forthcoming visitor center.
David Bizot of the National Marine Sanctuary Program says MBNMS was a good
pilot site for telepresence due to its visually compelling habitat (kelp
forests) and its physical location, just meters from the coastline of the
city of Monterey, California. "From a technical perspective, it was
relatively easy to install and maintain the infrastructure required to
make the broadcasts happen," he says. "Sanctuaries further offshore
will bring increasingly difficult technical challenges." Bizot says
these challenges may mean that camera and equipment installations in other
sanctuaries might be portable and deployed seasonally rather than permanently.
"The focus on high-quality, live broadcasts will not change, however,"
he says.

More webcams

Other examples of webcams in MPAs include:

Lundy Marine Nature Reserve: English Nature, the UK's statutory
advisory body for nature conservation in England, installed an underwater
webcam in Lundy Marine Nature Reserve in 2004. The goal was to raise
public awareness of the protected area, the UK's first no-take zone for
biodiversity. Technical difficulties arose, however. The reserve
surrounds an island that is 12 nm offshore, so the video required a satellite
link for transmission. The satellite allowed for only a still image
to be transmitted every 30 seconds, not an ongoing stream of video.
Chris Davis of English Nature (which is now part of a larger organization
called Natural England), says the choppy footage was unimpressive to web
visitors. Combined with the expense of the satellite transmission,
as well as the difficulty of regularly cleaning and maintaining such a
remote installation, the webcam became too much of a hassle. English
Nature shut it down in 2005 and Davis says the organization has no plans
to deploy another underwater webcam in the immediate future.

Macquarie Island: The Australian Antarctic Division operates
a video camera that looks upon its research station on Macquarie Island,
a subantarctic island in the Southern Ocean. Although the webcam
is not technically inside an MPA, the narrow island is a Tasmanian state
reserve and is surrounded by the 160,000-km2 Macquarie Island
Marine Park, a federal MPA. The webcam provides a year-round view
of the coastal station, refreshed every 15 minutes. Its website (http://www.aad.gov.au/asset/webcams/macca/default.asp)
also offers a selection of photos of extreme weather days on-site, including
the coldest and windiest since 2004. Peter Yates, telecommunications
manager with the Australian Antarctic Division, says that although the
webcam is not considered essential to the running of the station, it is
a "fantastic promotion and website entry point." It advertises the
program to web visitors from around the world. In addition, it allows
friends and family to see what expeditioners on the island are doing, and
enables head office staff to monitor weather conditions and special events
on the island (e.g., ship visits). The main challenge involved, says
Yates, is keeping the plastic enclosure around the camera clean.
"On a great number of days, it just isn't worth the effort: it will be
wet and covered with smudge from the wind right away," he says. Allocating
enough server space for the 35,064 images produced by the camera each year
is also a challenge, he says.

Aquarius Reef Base: Located 3.5 miles offshore in the Florida
Keys National Marine Sanctuary (US), the Aquarius undersea laboratory rests
on a sandplain next to coral reefs. It is 60 feet (18 m) below the
water surface in one of the sanctuary's no-take zones. Akin to the
International Space Station, Aquarius periodically serves as home to researchers
on missions of up to 10 days, studying a range of coral reef science issues.
In addition to its living chamber (called the "habitat"), the base includes
a seafloor observatory and a telecommunications buoy capable of sending
data, live video, and audio wirelessly to the Web. During missions,
three webcams document life inside Aquarius and research on the reef, and
transmit the information via the buoy's radio system. A recent mission
also included the use of two diver-mounted helmet-cameras. Visitors
to the Aquarius website (http://www.uncw.edu/aquarius)
can observe the activity in real time. Aquarius is operated by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Undersea Research Center,
hosted by the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Andrew Shepard, director of the Undersea Research Center, notes the
Aquarius webcams support the safety of the saturation diving operations.
The cameras have also enabled scientists to monitor their seafloor experiments
from labs on land. Shepard says Aquarius Reef Base benefits the Florida
Keys sanctuary in several ways. "We are the largest coral reef research
program in the Keys and we tailor our requests for research proposals to
sanctuary management priorities," he says. Resulting research has
shed understanding on nutrient sources, coral diseases, and other issues
that apply to the base's adjacent reef, the surrounding Florida Keys sanctuary,
and the Caribbean basin as a whole.

COSTS AND CHALLENGES INVOLVED WITH WEBCAMS: INTERVIEW
WITH DANIEL SENIE OF CARIBBEAN WEBCAMS

If you conduct a Google search for "underwater webcam", one of the first
sites you encounter is for Bonaire WebCams, a series of cameras that transmit
video from various locations on the Caribbean island of Bonaire.
One of these cameras is the so-called Bonaire ReefCam, located in shallow
water inside the Bonaire National Marine Park. The ReefCam is operated
privately by a resort and dive operator under permit from the park, and
was installed by Caribbean Webcams (http://www.caribbeanwebcams.com).

MPA News: You have said that setting up and operating underwater
webcams involves a significant investment in equipment, expertise, and
time. On average, what would you estimate the set-up and annual operating
costs to be for a single underwater webcam?

Daniel Senie: Costs are highly variable and depend on many factors.
Pricing could range from US$6000 to $15,000 or beyond, depending on connectivity
available, methodology for linking the camera to shore, power availability,
and so forth. [Editor's note: Some of the technologically advanced
webcam systems described in the adjacent article, including for offshore
sites, can range into tens of thousands of dollars to install, and require
a full-time technician to operate.]

MPA News: What are the main challenges involved in setting up
and maintaining an underwater webcam?

Senie: Saltwater destroys equipment. Although inexpensive
gear will provide great images the first week, and maybe even the first
few months, there will be serious trouble in the future. Also, maintenance
requires divers on a very frequent basis - at least a few times a week.
Sea life will otherwise overgrow the camera, lens port and all.

MPA News: What are the ideal ecological conditions for operating
an underwater webcam?

Senie: More than any other factor, closeness to shore - with
the ability to run a protected cable out to the camera - makes for the
ideal setting. Complexity arises when cameras cannot be powered from
shore, and data signals thus have to travel over wireless connections.
There are solutions to all such problems, but the more complexity present,
the more things there are to go wrong. When equipment is in remote
locations, things "going wrong" become that much more difficult to manage.

Editor's note: Jeffrey Leis is principal research scientist for
ichthyology at the Australian Museum. Our March 2003 edition (MPA
News 4:9) featured his remarks on larval dispersal and marine reserves,
accompanied by an extended online interview.

MPA networks are a series of reserves that individually may be too small
to be self-seeding, but that are close enough together so that one reserve
can seed another (Palumbi 2002). A major unknown in planning MPA
networks is how far apart the individual components of the network should
be separated. Most connectivity between the populations of demersal
organisms protected within the individual network components is by dispersal
of larvae, so the geographic scale over which larval dispersal takes place
in the ocean has become a major concern. It is increasingly obvious
that it is inappropriate to assume larvae of fishes and decapod crustaceans
(if not other taxa) are passive particles whose dispersal can be understood
as a purely physical process applied over the pelagic larval duration (PLD).
Dispersal is a much more biological process than was thought only a few
years ago: it is now clear that larvae behave (Sponaugle et al. 2002; Leis
2006), and this can greatly influence dispersal outcomes.

However, hard data on how far larvae actually disperse are rare.
In addition, dispersal of relevance for genetic connectivity (i.e., evolutionary
connectivity) is likely to be over much greater distances than for demographic
connectivity (i.e., ecological connectivity) (Leis 2002; Leis 2006).
Further, dispersal distance will differ among:

Species because of species-specific behaviors and PLDs;

Locations because of site-specific differences in hydrography and the interaction
of behavior of larvae with hydrography over both small and large scales;
and

Seasons, years, and other time periods, due to (a) differences in hydrography
among seasons and years as well as long-term oceanographic variations and
trends, and (b) temperature-dependant rates of development and physiology
in the cold-blooded organisms that dominate marine communities.

As a result, it is clear that no single inter-reserve spacing will be suitable
for all MPA networks, and one that is suitable from an ecological point
of view will probably differ from one suitable from an evolutionary point
of view. A fixed inter-component spacing in MPA networks that is
suitable for a sponge is unlikely to be suitable for a fish. This
lack of clarity on ideal inter-component spacing in MPA networks causes
headaches for planners and managers, and can delay the planning and consultation
process.

A solution that provides a rule of thumb for inter-component spacing
in MPA networks has been hinted at in the literature, but I have not seen
it clearly and simply stated. It is this:

All distances between all components of an MPA network (not
just adjacent components) should be scaled so that there is an approximately
equal number in each distance category (e.g., very short, short, medium,
large, very large), and there should not be large size gaps between distance
categories.

Put more formally, the frequency distribution of all inter-component distances
should be "flat", or even. Smaller distances might be able to be
accommodated within individual components of the MPA network, whereas moderate
and large distances would be among the different components of the network.
Extremely long dispersal distances, if they are thought to exist, might
be accommodated by taking into account more distant MPA networks.
The distances must be within water (e.g., not cutting across islands or
peninsulas.)

This rule of thumb assumes that the frequency distribution of dispersal
distances for all the individual species that the MPA network is supposed
to protect, integrated over time and over the space occupied by the network,
will be approximately flat, and that MPAs are designed to provide both
ecological and evolutionary protection. We will not be able to adequately
test the first part of the assumption for some time, but based on current
knowledge, it seems to be the best-informed guess we will be able to make
within the near future. The advantage of this rule of thumb is that
it can be applied now.

This rule of thumb was hinted at by several authors in the seminal Ecological
Applications volume on MPAs (13[1] supplement 2003). For example,
Roberts et al. (2003) state: "it will be safest to have a range of distances
among reserves". But perhaps the clearest statement is in Steve Palumbi's
report for the Pew Oceans Commission (Palumbi 2002): "Because the models
show that these different types of species require reserves with different
spacing, the simple conclusion is that reserve networks should have a variety
of spacing - from quite low to high - in order to accommodate the whole
community." The rule of thumb does not, however, seem to have reached
a wide audience of MPA planners and managers. I have been raising
it at conferences for a few years, yet it always seems to be greeted with
surprise. This essay is an attempt to fully and clearly state the
rule of thumb and introduce it to a wider audience.

My thanks to Bob Warner for pointing out important literature, Alan
Jordan for comments, and Sue Bullock for editorial assistance.

There are two new publications available on managing coral reefs in
an era of climate change. A Reef Manager's Guide to Coral Bleaching
- co-produced by the (US) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and IUCN - provides managers
with the latest scientific information on the causes of coral bleaching
and new strategies for responding to this threat. These strategies
include meaningful actions for before, during, and after bleaching events.
The guide makes several references to protected areas, such as identifying
the key role that MPA networks can play in helping reefs rebound from bleaching
events via larval connectivity. Featuring advice and case studies
from dozens of experts in coral bleaching and coral reef management, the
report is available in PDF format at http://www.coralreef.noaa.gov.

The second report, Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching,
published by IUCN and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), provides similar advice
to reef managers. Co-author Rodney Salm of TNC says it is essential
to anticipate climate change. "Rising temperatures and sea-level
challenge reef managers to be flexible and adapt their approaches to make
the reefs under their care more resilient to climate change as new science
and understanding emerges," says Salm. The report is available in
PDF format at http://www.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/2006-042.pdf.
(A sister publication on mangrove management ­ Managing Mangroves
for Resilience to Climate Change, also published by IUCN and TNC -
is available in PDF format at http://www.iucn.org/dbtw-wpd/edocs/2006-041.pdf.)

_____

WWF-Canada proposes framework for MPA network planning

A new report from WWF-Canada offers guidance on planning regional MPA
networks across Canada, with best practices and a proposed set of actions
for national leadership. The target audience for the report is planners,
decision-makers, and stakeholders playing a role in shaping Canada's approach
to planning MPA networks. A Policy and Planning Framework for
Marine Protected Area Networks in Canada's Oceans is available in PDF
format at http://www.wwf.ca/marinepriorityareas.

_____

Thirteen tons of derelict fishing gear removed from Hawaiian MPA

More than 13 tons of derelict fishing gear were removed from coral reefs
of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument during a
recent month-long, multi-agency removal effort coordinated by the (US)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. The derelict
gear was collected from an area totaling three square miles (7.8 km2).
NOAA has worked since 1996 to remove hazardous marine debris from the Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), where it injures marine life, destroys coral reef
habitat, and threatens safe navigation. The NOAA marine debris team
has collected more than 580 tons of debris in the islands since the beginning
of the program; the collected debris is then incinerated on land to provide
electricity for Hawai'i residents. The NWHI archipelago is in the
North Pacific Gyre, a swirling vortex of ocean currents that routes debris
in a circle around the North Pacific. Annually more than 52 tons
of marine debris accumulate in the 362,000-km2 Northwestern
Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. Information on NOAA's
marine debris removal operations for NWHI is available at http://www.pifsc.noaa.gov/cred/mdr.php.

_____

Experimental lobster reserves established in Norway

Norway's Department of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs has designated
four small experimental reserves (0.5-1 km2 in area) along the
Skagerrak coast in southeastern Norway with the goal of establishing and
studying baseline populations of lobster in the closures, including their
movement patterns in relation to the size and shape of reserves.
Fishing for lobster inside the reserves is now banned for 10 years; only
hook-and-line fishing is allowed. The four areas - the first lobster
reserves in the nation - were nominated by local fishing organizations
following a series of consultations with public officials. Even Moland
of the Institute of Marine Research (Flodevigen station), who is conducting
the lobster population experiments, says the reserves will serve to raise
local awareness of MPAs as a management tool, and could provide a basis
for regional discussion of the concept of large-scale zoning of the coastline.

April 2-5, 2007 - "MARXAN Best Practices Workshop". Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada. Clarifying the relationship of planning tools
to decision-making on marine resource management, and drafting text for
a best-practices handbook on MARXAN. http://www.pacmara.org

The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and should not be
interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the Packard Foundation,
NOAA, or NOAA's sub-agencies.

Subscriptions to MPA News are free. To subscribe, send
an e-mail message to mpanews@u.washington.edu.
Type "subscribe" on the subject line, and include your name, mailing address,
and daytime phone number in the text of the message. Also, please
note whether you would like your subscription to be delivered electronically
or in paper form.